Sunday, December 5, 2010

Tunnel of Love Soap and Soap Cake!

So this past weekend I did two experiments.
1. Embedding MP soap into a CP loaf.
2. Making a full soap cake

1. I made a heart shaped soap tube using clear MP soap. Then I embedded it into my CP soap loaf. I used Falling in Love FO. I mixed the base batter with TD and then pulled off some to color with raspberry pop mica to do a swirl. The swirls weren't quite what I wanted, but it's OK.

For the most part it looks like it was a good marriage. The clear MP wasn't as clear as I was hoping it would turn out. The edges of the heart got a little fuzzy so some of it melted in the heat produced by the saponification process that the CP soap went through. I think if the soap slices were thinner (these were 1inch thick cuts) then the clarity of the MP soap would be better. So now the test is how the MP soap will fare as the CP soap cures. The soap will cure in the garage and it's been rainy and therefore the air has a high moisture content. Usually MP soap has to be wrapped up right away to prevent "sweating" as the humectant qualities of the MP soap pulls moisture from the air. But the CP soap has to remain unwrapped during it's curing process so... Also the CP soap will shrink as it's moisture content evaporates so what will happen to the MP soap inside?

2. I made a full soap cake! Yesterday I used two 9 inch silicone cake pans and made two soap patties, or the "cake" rounds.

I mixed up a bunch of fragrances: Sparkling Grapefruit, Vanilla Pear, Strawberry Jam, White Grape Juice. The vanilla in the Vanilla Pear and Strawberry Jam will make these cake patties turn much more brown. I think sort of a chocolate color. I did color some of the batter with TD to produce this swirly marbley effect. Really pretty actually. Hopefully, they'll look just as nice or better when the cake is cut into slices.

Here's perspective on the soap patties against my hand. That's what the top of the cake patties look like, not as pretty as the bottom that was in the pan.

Today, I layered the cakes put "frosting" in between and frosted the outside. I used sparkling grapefruit and summer melon spritzer as fragrance and used grape pop mica for color. (I love TKB Trading's Pop mica collection!) I did leave a bit of the soap uncolored so I could pipe on an accent. This whole cake is 5 pounds of soap!

I sprinkled some glitter on top as well. I think it turned out fabulous, at least on the outside. So cute!!

I'll cut this soap either tomorrow or the next day. I don't want to wait too long or it will be difficult to cut, and I think it's going to be challenging enough to cut into cake slice wedges.

I hope this turns out well. It took me a long time to decide on fragrance and color for this cake. I really didn't want to make any errors or wrong choices. Otherwise I'm going to be stuck with 5 pounds of soap!